Monthly Archives: September 2016

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Nature vs Nurture debate has been going on for decades. I learned how these factors affect our physical characteristics, physical abilities, specific behaviors and likes and dislikes. However, there is a debate regards on which factors;Nature and nurture affects our characteristics. There are things that are chosen from when you are born such as hair color. However, there are also attributes that requires nurture that changes or better further the nature.

First of all, your nurture, how parents and people around you treat you as a child affects your behaviors. In a study run by Cambridge university, adults were told to play with children with toys that are stereotyped as “girly” or “boy’s” toys. However, these children swapped clothes to clothes that are girly or boyish, opposite to there gender. Most adults showed a trend of giving children toys that best fit their gender. Adult gave girls dressed as boys would often give toy’s like cars and gave boys. Vise versa giving boys dressed as girls toy’s like barbie and baby dolls. These evidences suggests how parents stereotyping their child in their gender role affects the way these children may act. Surrounding little kids with an environment and toy’s may have caused them to divide them into stereotypical boys and girls. However, their are also nature elements in this.

Secondly another study run by Cambridge reported a trend of monkeys choosing toys that fit their gender role. Female monkeys chose baby dolls and Male monkeys chose vehicles. One female monkey went into the bag of toys and chose baby dolls instead of other toys, proving this point even further. In addition to this, they mentioned “boys are attracted to things that are moving, physical and have motion.” How monkeys were “spinning the wheels” allowed showed how they behave in a biological way affected there behaviors.

From the research, it is clear that nature affects how we behave because some things we do are programmed. Eg, boys and girls acting differently. But on the other hand, we have to keep in mind that there is also some nurture that also affects this;Parents suggesting children to play toys that fit into the stereotypical gender role unconsciously. However, the test they did only identified how parents act to children. The experiment do not identify whether children prefer boyish or girly toys. Because of this, the experiment on monkey is more reliable and consist stronger evidence wins the debate that nature affects kids behavior on choosing toys.